Oh, The Metahumanity! (Mar 29-31)

Mon, 04/04/2016 - 07:43 — Bryan Lambert

We've got a new addition to Oh, The Metahumanity starting this week. I've been going at it obliquely, but starting now, I'm just going to straight up quantify the stupid in each episode. Because that's mostly all I care about.

Agents of SHIELD: Watchdogs (20% Stupid)

It's never good when the returning bad guy is a guy you don't remember in the slightest. That was just one of a few things that were a little off about this episode. Mac and his brother were a played-out trope. Executed well, but a played-out trope pulled straight from Hollywood's Unresolved Daddy Issues folder, even though it's brothers. "I'm sorry, my work's really important so I can't spend as much time with my family as I want' is something I find deeply exhausting in media.

Also, the supposed legal and moral quandary around. what Daisy was doing is... iffy. SHIELD is a largely secret, extralegal organization. Mac's worried about the civil liberties of the guy she scares, but is fine with raiding and shooting a compound of them? I'm positive this show has walked up to and past that line repeatedly in its history. And if it's meant as character development for Daisy, it's not a welcome one.

That said, aside from those things, it was a well-executed episode. I notice the references to the movies are ramping up, presumably in preparation for the events of Civil War, and the stuff between May and Simmons was great. The Coulson-Lincoln stuff was a little hacky, but again, well-executed.

The Flash: "Flash Back" (40% Stupid)

Consistency, The Flash. Consistency. Is messing with the timeline dangerous or not? Everyone says it's dangerous. One time it opened a singularity. One time it released a monster. But the monster could be vibrated out of existence with sound? Something centuries of time travelers never hit upon? And Barry can seriously muck up the timeline by being stuuuuuuupid and the only change is that they have a new best friend? ARGH.

Also, is Barry good at lying or isn't he? Because the Barry that stomped around Earth 2 with a permanently agape mouth and couldn't fucking keep it together in this episode around Eddie Thawne and is generally awful at hiding anything from anybody ever or following the most basic instructions about leaving shit well enough alone suddenly becomes a master negotiator when he's handcuffed to Thawnewells' chair.

Also also, THe Flash, "I have to" is not a magic phrase that convinces everyone that a really bad idea is actually a really good idea. STOP USING IT LIKE THAT.

I like this show, but they've spent way too much time this season hastily papering over and resolving sloppy, sloppy writing and plotting and having shit work out Just Because.

Daredevil: "Kinbaku" (15% Stupid)

I don't know whose fault it is, but the big issue with this episode is that Ten Years Ago Matt Murdock And Elektra are virtually indistinguishable from their current versions except for the words coming out of their mouths. I see what they're going for here, the idea that the warring sides within Daredevil are drawn to Elektra and Karen Page respectively, but the Elektra-Matt chemistry is not there at all. Hopefully, things will pick up soon when they start kicking people in the face. In other news, Karen Is Investigating More Stuff.

Arrow: "Beacon Of Hope" (20% Stupid)

A BEE MAN? Look, I get it. It's a cost saving measure and a way to handle the fact that this show traditionally solves problems by kicking them in the face until they stop moving, which is difficult to do with a swarm of robot bees. But taking a bunch of old costume parts laying around and painting them yellow and black is lame. The rest of the episode was fine-to-great, depending on how much you love Curtis Holt. I love him a lot, so I enjoyed those parts a lot. I'm also not sure Felicity needed a crazy bee woman with a tumor threatening to rip her spine out to convince her that she could used her corporation to help people, but that's like two percent stupid and BEE MAN is the other 18.

Legends of Tomorrow: "Left Behind" (15% Stupid)

Well, hey, look at that. It's the show Legends of Tomorrow thought it was being all along. This is like a smaller scale version of what happened to Agents of SHIELD after Winter Soldier came out. All the foundering and fucking around stopped and the show got down to business. Cronos being Rory the whole time! Snart's hand, even though they undid it immediately accounting for 5% of the stupid. League of Assassins, even though Austrailian Professor of Knife Comparison Studies Ra's Al Ghul was back, accounting for another five percent. And the final five goes to "time drift". Thank, Professor Fartsparkles. And kudos to them for using time travel to take Ray and Kendra's fake relationship and give it a real two year foundation. More like this, Legends of Tomorrow.